DMart chooses discipline over digital scale as q-comm rewrites grocery retail

For years, DMart’s answer to India’s digital grocery revolution was straightforward: build an online business, but do it the DMart way—larger baskets, lower prices, scheduled deliveries and, above all, discipline on costs. That strategy is now being put to its hardest test.

Avenue Supermarts Ltd (ASL), which operates DMart, has slashed the footprint of its online grocery arm DMart Ready to 11 cities from 24 a year ago. Seven more cities were exited in the June quarter alone. The retreat is not because online grocery has stopped growing. It is because that growth has yet to generate enough profit to justify the cost of pursuing it everywhere.